The Commentariat -- August 13

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... Here's the transcript. ...

... Karen Garcia has an excellent post, followed by excellent comments, on Obama's speech at Johnson Controls, a speech which Obama effectively repeats here in his weekly address.

In a fit of optimism, I've posted a comments page on the Republican candidates debate on Off Times Square. Ever a realist, I've posted the same page on Reality Chex Annex. Try Off Times Square first, please (a plea that's subject to change).

Matt Bai of the New York Times on Thursday's Republican debate when all the candidates vowed they would never raise revenues even in a 10-to-1 cuts-to-spending ratio: "what any independent-minded voter saw in that moment were eight people who were not, in fact, serious about governing. They were serious about pandering to the marginal elements of their party. That’s about it." Then Bai goes on to write that Democrats would do the same thing if asked about Social Security. CW: Bai's evidence? Nothing. This mindless insistence on pushing the "both sides do it" meme, even when it isn't true, is an egregious assault on actual journalism. This is one of the worst examples I've ever seen: since Bai couldn't cite an actual case of Democrats "doing it," he just made one up. No wonder some of our commenters feel free to be fact-free; they see it on the pages of "the paper of record whatever." Update: I checked back later and a lot of the Times commenters called out Bai for his false equivalency. I find that pretty encouraging. ...

... CW: Now here's something we like to see moving into the MSM. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity.... Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenues are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.... Democrats are too cowed to counter much, given polls that show many Americans believe Mr. Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package did not work, despite studies to the contrary."

** CW: I'm moving this forward from yesterday's Commentariat because it's such a worthwhile read: Weekend Reading. Don Peck writes a long essay in The Atlantic that won't cheer you any: In 2005, Citigroup analysts wrote that "America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn’t matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent [emphasis added]; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation’s treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts ... had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy.... Income inequality usually shrinks during a recession, but in the Great Recession, it didn’t. From 2007 to 2009, the most-recent years for which data are available, it widened a little."

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress examines the 11th Circuit Court's decision to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional. The bottom line is, "... the only real question in this case is whether the government is required to first take your money and then buy health coverage for you, or whether the Constitution allows Congress to cut out the middle man." You have to read Millhiser's post to grasp his logic. He also explains that the Clinton-appointed judge who ruled against the individual mandate is a conservative to the right of Supeme Court Chief Justice Roberts & Justice Scalia. ...

... E. J. Dionne on what dissenting Judge Stanley Marcus of the 11th Circuit got right. Marcus wrote, "The approach taken by the majority has also disregarded the powerful admonitions that acts of Congress are to be examined with a heavy presumption of constitutionality, that the task at hand must be approached with caution, restraint, and great humility, and that we may not lightly conclude that an act of Congress exceeds its enumerated powers."

Liz Goodwin in Yahoo! News: "Three recent [New York] Law School graduates are suing their alma mater in a $200 million class action, alleging they were deliberately misled about their future career prospects.... The plaintiffs say they were told the employment rate for NYLS alumni 9 months after graduation was between 90 and 95 percent. They say they had no idea that figure included people who were employed in jobs that don't require a law degree, or even a college degree. The percentage of recent graduates who are in jobs that require or prefer a J.D. may even be below 50 percent, they allege."

Contra the conventional wisdom, Nate Silver says the Ames straw poll "has a pretty good predictive track record." With graphs & tables, naturally.

Most Protests Are Astroturfed. Prof. David Meyer in a Washington Post op-ed: "Ostensibly spontaneous eruptions of political protest reflect the hard work and investment of organizers who cultivate grass-roots activism."

David Dayen of Firedoglake has an impressive rundown of local stories about ordinary Americans challenging Republican Tea Party members of Congress at townhall meetings. Includes video of a protest against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) -- "Stop voting against jobs!" As Dayen notes, "If this organic movement were happening on the right, it would be front-page news in every national newspaper in the country. We know because the distinctly non-organic movement in 2009 was front-page news."

Rachel Maddow pays tribute to former Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield (Oregon), who died this week and current Republicans who occasionally aren't afraid of arithmetic, science & common sense:

A Crack in the Tea Potty? I did sign that pledge when I was first running [for the House in 2004]. I no longer sign any pledges. [A pledge] restrains your ability to think creatively.... I informed the organization I don't consider [the earlier pledge] binding. I don't care to be associated with it. It's too constraining.... We have a broken tax code that is skewed to the wealthy and corporations [who] know how to move capital around. -- Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), speaking at a townhall meeting, on the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge. ...

     ... CW: Fortenberry still has plenty of dumb economic ideas, like support for a balanced budget amendment, but he's moving in the right direction.

Right Wing World *

Corporations are people, my friend. -- Mitt Romney ...

... Paul Krugman: "... the corporate profits tax isn’t a tax on these organizations. It’s a tax on these organizations’ profits — the share of their income that does NOT go to workers and suppliers. Now, stockholders are people too — but they are, on average, quite rich people, who are doing very well as most Americans suffer." ...

... The Democratic National Committee pounces (figuratively):

... CW: you probably already knew this, but Romney is richy-rich. AP: "The immense fortune controlled by [Mitt] Romney and his wife, Ann, is worth $190 million to $250 million — within the same range as his 2007 presidential financial disclosure records, his campaign said. Romney's financial records, submitted Friday to meet a deadline set by the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, valued his fortune at $86 million to $264 million." Despite a 2008 pledge to divest himself of investments that "would comport with my positions," "IRS records show that between 2007 and 2009, Romney's family charity, the Tyler Charitable Trust, continued to buy and sell other investments in companies that dealt with Iranian businesses, complied with Chinese censorship or aided in stem cell research."

Charles Blow: "... all the [Republican presidential] candidates ... confirm[ed] that they felt so strongly about not raising taxes that they would all walk away from a hypothetical deficit-reduction deal that was as extreme as 10 parts spending cuts to one part tax increases.... No person who would take such a stance is fit to be president of the United States or any developed country. Good governance in a democratic society is about the art of the deal, not fiats and dictum. You want leaders who stand up for principles but not in the way of progress." ...

... Kurt Andersen in the New York Times: "Keeping track of which politician has signed which pledge is head-spinning. These pledges make the politicians more like robots, built to respond in simple, unchanging ways."

Michele Bachmann's campaign team -- and her husband -- roughed up another MSM reporter, CNN's Don Lemon. Print story here. Last month, Bachmann's team "pounced on (literally), grabbed and pushed" ABC reporter Brian Ross when he tried to ask Bachmann a question.

* Where the government represents only the wealthiest one percent. And the Constitution-loving leaders abolish the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

News Ledes

MSNBC is reporting that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has announced his candidacy for POTUS. No link. ...

     ... AP Update: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry joined the 2012 GOP race for president Saturday with an announcement sure to reverberate halfway across the country as his rivals competed in Iowa for the support of party activists. 'I full well believe I'm going to win,' Perry told South Carolina voters on a conference call about an hour before he planned to kick off the campaign with a speech in Charleston."

Washington Post: the Ames, Iowa Republican presidential straw poll is today. CW: it is, as Stephen Colbert explains, "a crucial test to see if a candidate can get Midwesterners to put down a food plate long enough to mark a ballot." ...

     ... Update: looks like the Des Moines Register is running a livestream on its front page. It's beginning now at 1:20 pm ET. It's on a teensy image, but you can supersize it. It begins with an invocation of Jesus' name. ...

     ... ** New York Times Update 2: Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll. Here's the Des Moines Register story. The CNN story is here. It ends on this note: "Only one Republican has won the straw poll and gone on to occupy the Oval Office: George W. Bush." 

Guardian: American artist Shepard Fairey, most famous for his Obama "Hope" poster, was beaten up outside a Copenhagen, Denmark bar early this morning, allegedly because of a controversy over his mural installation at a Copenhagen site formerly occupied by a left-wing community organization.

New York Times: "As leaders in the Arab world and other countries condemn President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on demonstrators in Syria, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq has struck a far friendlier tone, urging the protesters not to 'sabotage' the state and hosting an official Syrian delegation. Mr. Maliki’s support for Mr. Assad has illustrated how much Iraq’s position in the Middle East has shifted toward an axis led by Iran. And it has also aggravated the fault line between Iraq’s Shiite majority, whose leaders have accepted Mr. Assad’s account that Al Qaeda is behind the uprising, and the Sunni minority, whose leaders have condemned the Syrian crackdown."